Black Madonna
The Black Madonna refers to the dark-skinned or black-faced images and statues of the Virgin Mary venerated throughout Europe (Chartres, Montserrat, Częstochowa, Einsiedeln, and hundreds of others). Their blackness has been variously attributed to candle soot, artistic convention, or — most compellingly for the archive — the survival of pre-Christian dark goddess worship absorbed into Christian Mariology (see Christianity_and_Paganism).
The Black Madonna is the Christian carrier of the dark divine feminine — the Isis-Nephthys, the Persephone-as-Queen-of-the-Dead, the Sophia in her exiled chthonic form. She integrates the Shadow aspect of the feminine that the sanitized white Madonna excludes. In Jungian terms, she is the Anima in her complete, undivided form: simultaneously nurturing and terrifying, heavenly and underworld, light and dark.
See Also
- Christianity_and_Paganism — the syncretistic process that produced the Black Madonna
- Isis — the Egyptian predecessor whose attributes the Black Madonna inherits
- Gnostic_Sophia — the exiled, suffering divine feminine
- Persephone — the Queen of the Dead as dark feminine archetype
- Mother_Archetype — the complete Mother including her shadow aspect
- Anima_and_Animus — the Black Madonna as the undivided, complete Anima
- The_Shadow — the darkness the Black Madonna integrates